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‘The one who trampled Hades underfoot’: a comparative analysis of Christ's descent to the dead and trinitarian relations in second-century Christian texts and Hans Urs von Balthasar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2019

Matthew Y. Emerson
Matthew Y. Emerson*
Affiliation:
Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, OK 74804
*
*Corresponding author. Email: matthew.emerson@okbu.edu
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Abstract

In both Theo-Drama IV and Mysterium Paschale, Balthasar suggests that the descensus existentially separates the divine hypostases of Father and Son. He also repeatedly argues that his position is faithful to the Great Tradition. While there has been much debate about Balthasar's view of the descensus, this debate has focused mostly on the issues of universalism and penal substitution, leaving the issue of trinitarian relations either to the side or without an analysis of its historical precedent. This article attempts to address this lacuna by asking whether Balthasar's view of the descensus is in fact supported by the Great Tradition, with a specific focus on second-century texts. After surveying the apostolic fathers, second-century Jewish and Christian traditions (e.g. the New Testament apocrypha), second-century apologists and Melito's Peri Pascha, the article concludes that Balthasar's position does not find historical support in the second century. His view may be in line with the Great Tradition elsewhere, but it is not grounded in this seminal century of Christian doctrinal reflection.

Keywords

Hans Urs von Balthasardescent to hellinseparable operationssecond centuryTrinity

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 277 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Introduction

Hans Urs von Balthasar says of Christ's descent to the dead in one section of Theo-Drama, volume 4, that

Jesus does experience the darkness of the sinful state, not in the same way as the (God-hating) sinner experiences it (unless the sinner is spared such experience), but nonetheless in a deeper and darker experience. This is because it takes place in the profound depths of the relations between the divine Hypostases – which are inaccessible to any creature.Footnote 1

In the immediately preceding paragraph, Balthasar says of the ‘hour’ (a synonym in his work for the Passion and especially the descent)

Here the God-drama reaches its acme: perverse finite freedom casts all its guilt onto God, making him the sole accused, the scapegoat, while God allows himself to be thoroughly affected by this, not only in the humanity of Christ but also in Christ's trinitarian mission. The omnipotent powerlessness of God's love shines forth in the mystery of darkness and alienation between God and the sin-bearing Son …Footnote 2

Balthasar here claims that in Christ's descent – his experience of the state of death between his crucifixion and resurrection – Jesus endures separation from God in a way that no other human being can, that is, separation between the divine hypostases of Father and Son.Footnote 3 This separation is predicated on the God-man's experience of the poena damni and the accompanying visio mortis, an experience that necessitates the non-Nestorian participation of the divine nature of the Son.Footnote 4 In experiencing this existential separation from the Father, and because that separation is bridged via the love of the Spirit, Jesus heals the divide between God and man created by sin in his divinity.Footnote 5 In other words, Balthasar argues that the Son experiences sin's separation from God in hell in the divine nature, and in doing so saves humanity from that divide.Footnote 6 Aidan Nichols shares this interpretation of Balthasar's thought on the descent, saying

[The descent] … demonstrates the costliness of our redemption: the divine Son underwent the experience of Godlessness…. it shows that the God revealed by the Redeemer is a Trinity. Only if the Spirit, as vinculum amoris between the Father and the Son, can re-relate Father and Son in their estrangement in the Descent, can the unity of the Revealed and Revealer be maintained.Footnote 7

I should finally mention that Balthasar's view may imply that, because Christ apparently experiences the descent primarily qua divinity, his humanity, his incarnate state, is stripped away or at least minimised in importance.Footnote 8 Here I need to quote Balthasar at length, as it is in the following description of the continuity of the hypostatic union during the descent that Balthasar draws together the trinitarian and christological implications of his view of Holy Saturday:

If ‘man’ is the living and mortal being composed of body and spirit in a unity whom we know and if this man ceases to be in death (whatever might become of him after death), {then Jesus has gone to the end of his being human and, having become human, he has gone to the limits of his surrender of himself (John 10:17). And in his being dead with the dead, the attitude and stance of the divine Logos has been stripped away, as it were. For it was in the extremities of this death that the Logos found the adequate expression of this divine stance:} letting himself remain available for the Father in everything, even in the ultimate alienation. The stripping away (Entblößung) of the man Jesus is the laying bare (Bloßlegung) not only of Sheol but also of the trinitarian relationship in which the Son is entirely the one who springs forth from the Father. Holy Saturday is thus a kind of suspension, as it were, of the Incarnation, whose result is given back to the hands of the Father and which the Father will renew and definitively confirm by the Easter Resurrection.Footnote 9

Some theologians, most notably Alyssa Pitstick, have thoroughly critiqued Balthasar's position in recent years. One of Pitstick's primary charges is that Balthasar's position is not consistent with the Catholic tradition, and particularly with papal decrees on the subject. Balthasar, on the other hand, consistently claims that his view is in accord with that tradition.Footnote 10 This article does not intend to wade into the intra-Catholic debate, at least in terms of whether or not Balthasar's position is in line with Catholic orthodoxy; rather, I hope to address a lacuna in the assessment of Balthasar's position, namely whether or not his claim that the descensus results in an existential separation between the hypostases of Father and Son can be described as ‘traditional’ in light of some of the earliest sources on the descent. While I could assess this claim via comparison with any number of eras of Christian dogmatic inquiry, here my focus will remain on second-century writers’ views of the descent and how they relate it to Christ's person and work. I have chosen to focus on the second century because it stands at the fountainhead of Christian doctrinal inquiry. My guiding questions include, then, the following: did second-century Christian writers posit, as Balthasar does, that Christ's descent is his experience of sin's torment qua divinity? Does this event in Christ's work introduce existential separation between the first and second persons of the Trinity? In other words, how closely does Balthasar's position actually come to second-century reflection on the nature of God and his work?

I will argue in what follows that the second-century texts under consideration discussed Christ's descent and its effectiveness with respect to both the human and divine natures of Jesus and therefore the Godhead's participation in the act of the descent. Contrary to Balthasar, however, for second-century writers the descent is not an event that separates the divine hypostases of Father and Son, but rather a part of the one redemptive act accomplished by the one God through the incarnate Son. This claim will be supported through exploring multiple second-century texts from three groups of writers: the apostolic fathers, second-century Jewish and Christian traditions, and the second-century apologists. I will also explore the descent in Melito's Peri Pascha.Footnote 11

The apostolic fathers

There are a number of attestations to Christ's descent to the deadFootnote 12 in the apostolic fathers,Footnote 13 particularly in IgnatiusFootnote 14 and Polycarp. Regarding the former, Trallians 9.1–2 refers to Christ, ‘who really was crucified and died while those in heaven and on earth and under the earth looked on; who, moreover, really was raised from the dead when his Father raised him up’. Notice that ‘those under the earth’ looked on at Christ's redeeming work, and that it is ἀπὸ νεκρῶν, ‘from the dead’, that Christ was raised. These two phrases appear to be parallel in this passage, in that the first clause descends from heaven to earth to those under the earth, and the second begins with Christ coming ‘from the dead’ and being raised up. Further, ἀπὸ or ἐκ νεκρῶν was a common phrase used by early Christian writers, including New Testament authors, to refer to the place of the ‘dead’ or ‘dead ones’, given its participial structure.Footnote 15 This makes it likely that in this passage, as well as others that use this phrase such as Magnesians 9.2,Footnote 16 Ignatius is referring not just to Christ's bodily resurrection but to his being raised from among the dead ones. In other words, between his crucifixion and resurrection, Christ was in the place of the dead ones, and in his resurrection he was brought out of it.

One other potentially relevant passage in the Ignatian corpus is Ephesians 18.2.Footnote 17 Here, Ignatius says, ‘For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary according to God's plan, both from the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit. He was born and baptised in order that by his suffering he might cleanse the water.’ He goes on to place ‘three mysteries’ – virginity, birth, death – together, making it likely that 18.2 is also a conflation of the incarnation and descent to the dead. This was not uncommon – we will see it also in Ascension of Isaiah and the Teachings of Silvanus – and early Christian writers often drew parallels between the waters of Mary's womb, Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ descent to the dead.Footnote 18 In fact, Shepherd of Hermas, Sim. 9.16, one of the other remaining instances of the descent motif in the apostolic fathers, also refers to the descent to the dead as a baptism into the waters of the dead.Footnote 19 If, then, the phrase ‘by his suffering he might cleanse the water’ is a reference to Christ's crucifixion and subsequent descent, we have in Ignatius a clear reference to both Christ's divinity and humanity (‘For our God, Jesus the Christ’) coupled with the descent.

Even if we do not take this as a reference to the descent, though, Ignatius’ other letters affirm Christ's divinity, and that in both his divine and human natures the person of Jesus accomplished redemption through his entire work – his life, death, descent to the dead and resurrection.Footnote 20 Thus we are on strong grounds in claiming that Ignatius's view of Christ's work, including his descent, is one in which both Christ's divine and human natures participate. We also have in Ignatius distinctions between Father, Son and Spirit, indicating that the Son's accomplishment of redemption as the incarnate Christ is not a modalist or Ebionite construction, but rather one in which the Son is God, along with Father and Spirit, and in which there is only one God.Footnote 21 While it would be anachronistic to say that Ignatius has in view the hypostatic union and the doctrine of the Trinity, we do find seeds of both of those doctrines in his letters, including in his descriptions of Christ's descent to the dead.

Aside from the one mention in Hermas, discussed above, the only other explicit mention of the descent in the apostolic fathers is Polycarp's Philippians 1.2.Footnote 22 Here, Polycarp alludes to Acts 2:24, a passage about Christ's time in Hades, when he says, ‘I also rejoice because your firmly rooted faith, renowned from the earliest times, still perseveres and bears fruit to our Lord Jesus Christ, who endured for our sins, facing even death, whom God raised up, having loosed the birth pangs of Hades.’ It is possible that Polycarp's uses of ἐκ νεκρῶν in 2.1–2 are also references to the descent, but this is unclear in the context. In any case, there is no clear connection here or elsewhere between seeds of the doctrine of the Trinity and the descensus doctrine. Thus in the apostolic fathers corpus we have just Ignatius to help us formulate connections between these two doctrines. And even there, we are only able to make tentative conclusions, namely that Ignatius affirms the descent as part of Christ's whole work, a work that is carried out in his divine and human natures.

Second-century Jewish and Christian traditions

Other second-century Christian works besides the apostolic fathers also begin to flesh out both the descent doctrine and its relation to the doctrine of God. These include New Testament apocryphaFootnote 23 and Christian interpolations into Old Testament pseudipigrapha (e.g. the Odes of Solomon). Regarding the former, while most of the apocryphal works mention the descent, some of these do so relatively briefly and without clear reference to Christ's divinity. So, for instance, Gospel of Peter 10.41–2 briefly mentions Christ's preaching to the dead between his death and resurrection.Footnote 24 Likewise the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs also contains a few brief mentions of Christ's descent (T. Dan 5.7–13; T. Benjamin 9.3; possibly T. Asher 7.3).Footnote 25 Here we begin to see glimpses of both what early Christians thought about the descent as well as how they related it to their doctrine of God; all three of these passages are concerned with Christ ascending from Hades, and both the T. Dan and T. Asher passages are focused on Christ's war with and victory over Hades and Satan in his descent. T. Dan also proclaims that Christ in his descent took the souls of the righteous to Eden. Most importantly for this article, T. Dan and T. Asher (if taken as a reference to the descent) both refer to Christ as ‘God’.

The Odes of Solomon paints a similar picture.Footnote 26 Odes 15.9–10, 17.10–17, 22, 24.5–7, 29.4–6, 31.1 and 42.6–20 all clearly speak of the Messiah's descent to and overthrow of Hades.Footnote 27 Odes 42.11 is characteristic of these passages, and it reads, ‘Sheol saw me and was shattered, and Death ejected me and many with me.’ We once again see Christ descending to the underworld, defeating Death and Hades, and leaving with ‘many’. None of these Odes, however, clearly presents Christ as divine, although he is portrayed as such elsewhere in the work.Footnote 28 It is difficult, then, to draw any concrete conclusions from the Gospel of Peter, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs or the Odes of Solomon regarding the descent's connection to the doctrine of God in these works.Footnote 29

This connection becomes much clearer, though, when we look elsewhere in the apocryphal books. For instance, Teachings of Silvanus 103.23–104.14 says,

O soul, persistent one, in what ignorance you exist! For who is your guide into the darkness? How many likenesses did Christ take on because of you! Although he was God, he was found among men as a man. He descended to the Underworld. He released the children of death. They were in travail, as the scripture of God has said. And he sealed up the (very) heart of it (the Underworld). And he broke its (the Underworld's) strong bows completely. And when all the powers had seen him, they fled, so that he might bring you, wretched one, up from the Abyss, and might die for you as a ransom for your sin. He saved you from the strong hand of the Underworld.

A later passage, 110.14–111.4, similarly declares,

Know who Christ is, and acquire him as a friend, for this is the friend who is faithful. He is also God and Teacher. This one, being God, became man for your sake. It is this one who broke the iron bars of the Underworld, and the bronze bolts. It is this one who attacked and cast down every haughty tyrant. It is he who loosened from himself the chains of which he had taken hold. He brought up the poor from the Abyss and the mourners from the Underworld. It is he who humbled the haughty powers; he who put to shame haughtiness through humility; he who has cast down the strong and the boaster through weakness; he who, in his contempt, scorned that which is considered an honor, so that humility for God's sake might be highly exalted; (and) he who has put on humanity.

In both of these texts, the author – highly dependent upon Psalm 107 (106) LXXFootnote 30 – portrays the descent as an act in which Christ overthrows Satan and Hades via concealing his divinity in his humanity. This incarnate appearance in Hades is not gnostic or docetic, but real,Footnote 31 and it allows Christ to enter Hades ‘disguised’, so as to defeat it.Footnote 32

Perhaps the clearest picture in the apocryphal texts of Christ descending in his incarnate divinity to Hades and achieving victory comes in Ascension of Isaiah 10.7–11; 11.19.Footnote 33 Here the author describes,

And I heard the voice of the Most High, the Father of my Lord, saying to my Lord Christ who will be called Jesus: ‘Go forth and descend through all the heavens, and thou wilt descend to the firmament and that world: to the angel in Sheol thou wilt descend, but to Haguel thou wilt not go. And thou wilt become like unto the likeness of all who are in the five heavens. And thou wilt be careful to become like the form of the angels of the firmament [and the angels also who are in Sheol]. And none of the angels of that world shall know that Thou art with Me of the seven heavens and of their angels … ’ And after this the adversary envied Him and roused the children of Israel against Him, not knowing who He was, and they delivered Him to the king, and crucified Him, and He descended to the angel (of Sheol).Footnote 34

In the context of the rest of the book, the ‘Lord Christ’ is clearly presented as God, whether through the triune confession of 8.18,Footnote 35 the worship of all three persons in 9.28–42 (seen also in 11.23–42) or the seating of the Son to the right of the Spirit and on the right hand of God in 11.23–42. The three persons of Son, Spirit and ‘God’ share in their people's confession, receive their people's worship and exercise authority equally. Further, Ascension of Isaiah presents the descent as effective because Christ's divine nature is hidden from view of Satan and his fallen angels. Christ is able to descend into Hades and thereby defeat Death because neither Satan nor Hades recognises him as God.Footnote 36

Early Christian apologists

This link between the descensus and the doctrine of God is explicit in the early Christian apologists. Both Justin Martyr and Irenaeus quote the Apocryphon of Jeremiah.Footnote 37 In Dialogue with Trypho 72, Justin quotes it as saying, ‘The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel who were in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own salvation.’Footnote 38 Irenaeus quotes it similarly in Against Heresies 3.20.4 and 5.31.1,Footnote 39 as well as in Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 78,Footnote 40 although in Irenaeus’ quotations there is an added referent to not only the preaching of salvation but also deliverance from Hades. The key point to make here, though, is that both Justin and Irenaeus quote this text to indicate that Christ descended to the dead as the incarnate God-man. It is worth quoting Irenaeus at length in Against Heresies 3.20.4 to see this connection between the victory achieved in Christ's descent and his divinity:

Again that it should not be a mere man who should save us, nor [one] without flesh – for the angels are without flesh – [the same prophet] announced, saying: ‘Neither an elder, nor angel, but the Lord Himself will spare them: He will Himself set them free.’ And that he should Himself become very man, visible, when He should be the Word giving salvation, Isaiah again says: ‘Behold, city of Zion: thine eyes shall see salvation.’ And that it was not a mere man who died for us, Isaiah says: ‘And the holy Lord remembered His dead Israel, who had slept in the land of the sepulcher; and He came down to preach His salvation to them, that He might save them.’Footnote 41

Notice here that it is precisely because Christ descends as the incarnation of God the Word that his descent is victorious. Irenaeus highlights both of these aspects – the incarnation of the divine person of the Word, and the continuation of the incarnation in the descent – as crucial to the effectiveness of the work accomplished in the descent.

Melito of Sardis

One final text worth mentioning that does not fall neatly into any of these categories is Melito of Sardis’ Peri Pascha.Footnote 42 This second-century text mentions the descent a number of times in its explication of the Passover and its christological meaning. Melito also begins with this very clear articulation of Christ's humanity and divinity in v. 8: ‘For the one who was born as Son, and led to slaughter as a lamb, and sacrificed as a sheep, and buried as a man, rose up from the dead as God, since he is by nature both God and man.’ Thus Melito's description of Christ's work in what follows is dependent upon this assumption of Christ's existence as both God and man.

Melito lays the groundwork for discussing Christ's descent in vv. 55–6, where in explaining the effect of the fall and the nature of death he says,Footnote 43

Therefore, all flesh fell under the power of sin, and every body under the dominion of death, for every soul was driven out from its house of flesh. Indeed, that which had been taken from the earth was dissolved again into earth, and that which had been given from God was locked up in Hades. And that beautiful ordered arrangement was dissolved, when the beautiful body was separated (from the soul).

Yes, man was divided up into parts by death. Yes, an extraordinary misfortune and captivity enveloped him: he was dragged away captive under the shadow of death, and the image of the Father remained there desolate. For this reason, therefore, the mystery of the passover has been completed in the body of the Lord.

Melito here states that at death human beings are separated in body and soul, with the body descending to the grave and the soul descending into Hades, the place of the dead. This explanation is important for understanding how Melito conceives of Christ's own death and his descent, which he mentions explicitly twice. First, in 70–71, Melito says,

This is the one who became human in a virgin, who was hanged on the tree, who was buried in the earth, who was resurrected from among the dead, and who raised mankind up out of the grave below to the heights of heaven.

This is the lamb that was slain. This is the lamb that was silent. This is the one who was born of Mary, that beautiful ewe-lamb. This is the one who was taken from the flock, and was dragged to sacrifice, and was killed in the evening, and was buried at night; the one who was not broken while on the tree, who did not see dissolution while in the earth, who rose up from the dead, and who raised up mankind from the grave below.

Similarly, in 101–2, Melito proclaims,

he rose up from the dead, and cried aloud with this voice: Who is he who contends with me? Let him stand in opposition to me. I set the condemned man free; I gave the dead man life; I raised up the one who had been entombed.

Who is my opponent? I, he says, am the Christ. I am the one who destroyed death, and triumphed over the enemy, and trampled Hades under foot, and bound the strong one, and carried off man to the heights of heaven, I, he says, am the Christ.

These lines show that Melito believes that Christ, in his death, descended to the realm of the dead, Hades, in order to achieve victory over it and Satan (‘the strong one’) so that he might deliver his people from death. Further, if we take these verses in the context of what Melito says earlier, in v. 8, we can confidently say that Melito here pictures Christ dying and experiencing death in his humanity but achieving victory over death via his exaltation – beginning with the descent and moving through the resurrection and ascension – precisely because of his divinity. In his humanity, per vv. 55–6, Christ experienced death as other humans do; his body descended to the grave and his soul descended to Hades. But Christ's descent is unique in that his humanity is united to his divinity, and thus this descent is not just like any other death but is a death-defeating death, and victorious death. The portrait of the descent in Melito is thus in line with what we have already seen in the apologists, apocrypha and apostolic fathers. Christ's descent to the dead is effective because he is the God-man.

Theological analysis

Given these various statements about the descent by early Christian writers, is there a coherent picture presented regarding how this doctrine relates to the doctrine of God, and the doctrine of the Trinity more particularly? While we should avoid anachronisms in answering this question, we can also safely note a number of ways in which the statements explored serve as catalysts for and precursors of later pro-Nicene trinitarian thought.

First, with respect to the person of Christ, there is a conceptual (not necessarily chronological) trajectory moving from truncated statements that Jesus victoriously descended to the dead in the apostolic fathers to overt and lengthy statements that his descent was effective precisely because he is the God-man. Hades let him in, and thus allowed his victory, because they did not immediately recognise his divinity given his incarnation. Further, this identification of Christ as God is not generically theistic, but specifically Jewish – the incarnate Lord who descended into Hades is the God of Israel (cf. Dialogue with Trypho 72; Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 78).

This of course is one of the primary impetuses for doctrinal development in the third and fourth centuries, and specifically for the controversies surrounding Paul of Samosota, Arius and Eunomius (among others).Footnote 44 How should the church account for the fact that the New Testament, and, for our purposes, these second-century descent texts, describe the man Jesus Christ as God? That question, much less any attempt at answering it, is not found in the texts explored above. Nevertheless, it is important to note that these kinds of texts are precisely what give rise to later trinitarian controversies.

Another trajectory that begins in these texts and continues through the Nicene controversy is the distinctions between persons.Footnote 45 We see this in something as simple as trinitarian confessions and doxologies,Footnote 46 but there are other ways in which the distinction between Father, Son and Spirit is made. In Ascension of Isaiah for instance, the ‘Most High of the high ones’ is the one ‘who will be called by the Holy Spirit through the lips of the righteous the Father of the Lord’. Here we have Father, Spirit and ‘Lord’ clearly distinguished from one another. Further, it is the Father, the Most High, who sends ‘my Lord Christ who will be called Jesus’ into the world (10.6–7). While we do not have here a clear-cut and explicit affirmation of the doctrines of eternal generation and procession, and while we should not therefore anachronistically import an explicit affirmation of those doctrines onto this text, we should also recognise that what this text does explicitly affirm – namely the equality of Father, Lord (Son) and Spirit as God, and the sending of the Lord (Son) by the Father – are precisely what gives rise to the doctrine of the eternal relations of origin in the fourth century.Footnote 47

We should also note here, though, some of the more curious statements by these writers regarding the distinction between Father and Son. For instance, Melito says of Jesus in Peri Pascha 105 that Jesus is ‘the one who sits at the right hand of the Father’, a New Testament statement if there ever was one, but then he continues to say that, ‘He bears the Father and is borne by the Father.’ We can also compare this to v. 9, which claims, ‘in that [Jesus] begets he is Father, in that he is begotten he is Son’. We could add to these Ignatius’ statements in Magnesians 7.2 and 8.2 that may suggest some kind of temporal procession and recession of the Son from and to the Father. Thus while there is distinction between Father and Son in Melito and Ignatius, and while Ignatius in particular also affirms the sending of the Son by the Father, there also in these two writers, at least, appears to be some confusion regarding how the Father and Son are distinguished from one another.

A final area in which these second-century descensus texts connect to the doctrine of the Trinity is in their clear and consistent affirmation that Christ descended in his humanity while united to his divinity, and that he experienced the sufferings of his humanity while remaining God in every sense. To put it in modern dogmatic terms, these texts contain seeds that would later take form in the doctrines of the hypostatic union and the so-called extra Calvinisticum.Footnote 48 We see this particularly in the disguise motif that comes up a number of times throughout these texts. Most prominent among them is Ascension of Isaiah, but that is by no means the only one. Many of the examples cited above note that Christ's descent was successful precisely because Hades did not recognise Christ for who he truly is, God in human flesh.Footnote 49 What this means is that these texts affirm Christ descended in his humanity while united to his divinity – the descent does not temporarily negate the incarnation, as Balthasar's position may imply.Footnote 50 Rather, it is precisely because of the continuity of the incarnation that the descent is effective.

Further, there seem to be a few clear statements that Christ's incarnation does not diminish or put on hold his divinity in any sense. In other words, there do not appear to be suggestions of kenotic christology or other kinds of kenoticism in these texts.Footnote 51 Rather, if anything, these texts seem to suggest seeds of the extra Calvinisticum, which states the divine nature of the Son remains, as the second hypostasis of the one God, omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent while incarnate. The Son's divine nature is hypostatically united to the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth but still God in every sense. The fact that these texts affirm the effectiveness of Christ's descent precisely because he is both human and divine, without qualification, seem more in line with something like the extra Calvinisticum, or at least at odds with kenotic christology. Ignatius, in Smyrneans 3.3, may be making such a statement, although it is unclear whether he is talking about the Son's divine nature or the human spirit of Jesus. Similar passages occur in T. Dan 5.7–13 and Teachings of Silvanus 103.23–104.14. Perhaps the clearest statement regarding this issue comes in Ascension of Isaiah 10.11, which states, ‘And none of the angels of that world shall know that Thou art with Me of the seven heavens and of their angels.’ Here the Most High (Father) declares that even though the Lord becomes incarnate, he will still be with the Father in heaven. In any case, what we find in these texts do not appear to be proto-kenoticism, but rather seeds of Chalcedonian christology, emphasising the hypostatic union and perhaps even suggesting something like the extra Calvinisticum. Footnote 52

Conclusion

What, then, can we conclude about the continuity or discontinuity between second-century writers’ views on the descent and trinitarian relations and the views of Balthasar? We should begin by noting that any conclusions related to later dogmatic formulations are necessarily tentative and always in danger of anachronism. Given these caveats, though, the first conclusion we can make is that these second-century texts clearly affirm that the descent is effective because Christ is both human and God. We can also say that this union of divinity and humanity exists throughout Christ's work on earth, including in the descent. Further, the divine nature that is united to Jesus’ human nature is that of the Son, or Lord, and is distinct from that of Father and Spirit. Rather than resulting in tritheism, though, these second-century texts continue to affirm the unity of God and that there is only one God.

What we might say, then, is that these second-century descent texts contain the seeds for both the questions asked and the pro-Nicene trinitarian formulations given as answers in the fourth and fifth centuries. We find in these texts hints of the one-God-in-three-persons confession, a confession that gave rise to the Nicene controversies in the first place and that, from the pro-Nicene theologians, resulted in doctrinal formulations such as the eternal relations of origin. We also find in the second century the seeds of Chalcedon, with the emphasis on humanity and divinity united in the one person of Christ, the continuity of the incarnation throughout Christ's work, and the continued divine work and nature of the Son even while incarnate.

Of course, we should also note that there are statements in these second-century texts that demand more explanation, and possibly even repudiation, given later pro-Nicene formulations. But, perhaps oddly enough, the descensus passages are not among those considered more problematic given later trinitarian orthodoxy. So, while we might anachronistically ask whether or not these authors meet the later standards of trinitarian orthodoxy with respect to those problematic passages, when it comes strictly to the descent passages they exhibit all the makings of proto-pro-Nicenes.

Finally, to end where we began, with Balthasar. While the great twentieth-century Catholic theologian may find precedents for his view elsewhere in church, he is not warranted in finding it in these second-century passages. Contrary to Balthasar, the second-century writers surveyed above, while certainly disparate in their aims and situations and without influencing one another in any explicit way, still broadly affirm the continuation of the incarnation in the descent, and thus the continued union of Christ's humanity and divinity. Further, in these second-century texts, Father and Son are not separated in the descent, but rather the descent is effective because the Son remains the Son in every respect, still seated at the right hand of the Most High even while descending to earth and then Hades in human flesh (e.g. Ascension of Isaiah). Father and Son are not separated, existentially or otherwise, only to be reunited by the love of the Spirit, but rather as the one God defeat death through the incarnate Son's descent into it in his human nature. The existentially kenoticFootnote 53 descent posited by Balthasar may find historical precedent elsewhere, but it does not find it in these second-century texts. More study is needed in other centuries and theological streams to definitively prove or disprove Balthasar's claim. Here I have attempted only to disprove from the seminal century of Christian theological reflection.

References

1 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, The Action, vol. 4 of Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory [hereafter TD 4] (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), p. 336Google Scholar.

2 Balthasar, TD 4, p. 335 (emphasis added). The end of the first sentence makes clear that the clause ‘between God and … Son’ is a reference to the divine persons of Father and Son and not merely between the triune God and the ‘humanity of Christ’.

3 David Lauber has demonstrated Balthasar's dependence on Barth for his view of the descent, with the exception that for Barth (following Calvin) the descent takes place on Good Friday, while for Balthasar it takes place in the liminal space of Holy Saturday. See Lauber, David, Barth on the Descent into Hell: God, Atonement, and the Christian Life (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), esp. pp. 42–75Google Scholar, for Balthasar's position and its dependence on Barth; and cf. pp. 1–41 for Barth's position. One will have to evaluate whether or not Balthasar was justified in seeing a radical separation between Father and Son in Barth's position on the descent (for the purposes of the present argument, I remain neutral on the question).

4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), pp. 168–76.

5 See e.g. Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, pp. 66–70.

6 ‘… if Jesus can be forsaken by the Father, the conditions for this “forsaking” must lie within the Trinity, in the absolute distance/distinction between the Hypostasis who surrenders the Godhead and the Hypostasis who receives it’. Balthasar, TD 4, p. 333. See also Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, pp. 49–88. Balthasar is clear that this divide is experiential, not ontological (pp. 71–88), but the point here is that there is still a divide between the hypostases of Father and Son.

7 Aidan Nichols, ‘Introduction’, in Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, pp. 1–10.

8 On this reading of Balthasar, see Pitstick, Alyssa Lyra, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ's Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 87–278Google Scholar, and especially pp. 115–240. Oakes, Edward T., among others, has challenged Pitstick's interpretation of Balthasar in ‘The Internal Logic of Holy Saturday in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 9/2 (Apr. 2007), pp. 184–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Descensus and Development: A Response to Recent Rejoinders’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 13/1 (Jan. 2011), pp. 3–24. See also the dialogue between Oakes and Pitstick, ‘Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy: An Exchange’, First Things 168 (Dec. 2006), pp. 25–32. Additionally, Paul J. Griffiths has critiqued Pitstick's reading of Balthasar in ‘Is There a Doctrine of the Descent into Hell?’ Pro Ecclesia 17/3 (2008), pp. 257–68. Finally, Pitstick has summarised her argument in Light in Darkness, and also therefore responded once again to her critics by defending her reading of Balthasar, in Christ's Descent into Hell: John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger, and Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2016).

9 Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘The Descent into Hell’, Expl IV, pp. 411–12. This translation is from Pitstick, Light in Darkness, p. 193. The portion in curly brackets reads in German, ‘so ist Jesus in der Hingabe seiner selbst (Jo 10, 17) bis an Ende seines Menschseins und Menschgewordenseins gegangen, und in seinem Totsein mit den Toten entblößt sich gleichsam jene Haltung und Gesinnung des göttlichen Logos, der in diesem Äußersten ihre[n] adäquaten Ausdruck fand’.

10 Balthasar, TD 4, pp. 290–8. See also Oakes, ‘Descensus and Development’, pp. 8–19. But then see Oakes’ comments in ‘The Internal Logic of Holy Saturday’ regarding the utter uniqueness of Balthasar's position, pp. 192–3.

11 There are ample resources on the descent in the early church, and even in the second century. Some of the most important include Daniélou, Jean, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), pp. 233–48Google Scholar; Grillmeier, Aloys, ‘Der Gottesohn im Totenreich: soteriologische und christologische Motivierung der Descensuslehre in der alteren christlichen Überlieferung’, Zeitschrift für Katolische Theologie 71 (1949), pp. 1–53Google Scholar, 184–203; Kroll, Josef, Gott ünd Hölle: Der Mythos vom Descensuskampfe (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963 [1932])Google Scholar; and MacCulloch, J. A., The Harrowing of Hell: A Comparative Study of An Early Christian Doctrine (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1930), pp. 83–173Google Scholar. These works necessarily do not deal with Balthasar's position, since he wrote his major works dealing with the descent after them. And while there has been ample debate about the validity of Balthasar's position, a surprising lacuna in that conversation regards whether or not this idea of divine hypostases being separated can be found in particular in the history of Christian thought. It is this gap that this article seeks to address, albeit only with respect to the second century.

12 Justin Bass notes that by the end of the second century the descent is affirmed ubiquitously: The Battle for the Keys: Revelation 1:18 and Christ's Descent to the Underworld (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), pp. 11, 19.

13 For introductions to critical issues and studies for each of the apostolic fathers to be discussed, see Holmes, Michael W., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007)Google Scholar. I do not intend here to wade into any critical debates surrounding any particular text in the apostolic fathers corpus. Instead, my focus is merely on surveying these texts for any discussion of the descensus.

14 For another survey of the descent in second- and third-century texts, including in Ignatius and other second-century writers covered in this article, see Wicks, Jared, ‘Christ's Saving Descent to the Dead: Early Witnesses from Ignatius to Origen’, Pro Ecclesia 17/3 (2008), pp. 281–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 282–94. Wicks does not, however, address the question I am raising, namely, whether or not Balthasar's articulation of the descent as causing existential separation between Father and Son is found in the second century. As his focus is rather on what the descent accomplishes in the doctrine of soteriology, my article should be seen as complementary to his but not redundant.

15 Bass, Battle for the Keys, pp. 29–30; Richard Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1998), p. 277.

16 ‘… how can we possibly live without him [Jesus Christ, our only teacher], whom even the prophets, who were his disciples in the Spirit, were expecting as their teacher? This is why the one for whom they rightly waited raised them from the dead when he came.’ Notice that here and in Trallians Ignatius speaks of the prophets and the general dead, respectively, as witnesses to Christ's descent to them.

17 On this passage and its interpretation, see Schoedel, William R., Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985), pp. 84–6Google Scholar. Schoedel identifies a parallel with Odes 22.5 (cf. 24.1–4) as well on p. 85.

18 See e.g. Connell, Martin F., ‘Descensus Christi ad Inferos: Christ's Descent to the Dead’, Theological Studies 62 (2001), p. 263CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McDonnell, Kilian, ‘The Baptism of Jesus and the Descent into Hell’, Worship 69/2 (1995), pp. 98–109Google Scholar; and Oakes, ‘Descensus and Development’, pp. 13–14.

19 On this passage and its interpretation, see Osiek, Carolyn, The Shepherd of Hermas: A Commentary on the Shepherd of Hermas (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), p. 238Google Scholar.

20 Ignatius, Ephesians salutation, 1.1, 7.2, 18.2, 19.3; Romans salutation (twice); Smyrnaeans 1.1; Polycarp 3.2.

21 Ignatius Ephesians 9.1; Magnesians 13.1; Smyrnaeans 2.1; possibly Magnesians 7.2.

22 On this passage and its interpretation, see Hartog, Paul (ed.), Polycarp's Epistle to the Ephesians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp: Introduction, Text, and Commentary (Oxford: OUP, 2013), pp. 100–102Google Scholar.

23 On the descent in the New Testament apocrypha, see Vitti, A. M., ‘Descensus Christi ad inferos iuxta Apocrypha’, Verbum Domini 7 (1927), pp. 138–44Google Scholar, 171–81. See also the brief but insightful overview of apocryphal ‘tours of hell’ in early Christianity by Bremmer, Jan N. in his ‘Descents to Hell and Ascents to Heaven in Apocalyptic Literature’, in Collins, John J. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature (Oxford: OUP, 2014), pp. 345–7Google Scholar. The standard work on tours is Himmelfarb, Martha, Tours of Hell: Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985)Google Scholar. Again, though, Vitti's essay is concerned with the soteriological purposes of Christ's descent, while Bremmer's and Himmelfarb's are even more broadly concerned not only with Christ's descent but descents in general. They are not, in other words, concerned with the Trinitarian and metaphysical question we are asking here.

24 For an introduction to the Gospel of Peter, including critical issues, thematic and theological issues, and a translation, see Ehrman, Bart D. and Pleše., Zlatko The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (Oxford: OUP, 2011)Google Scholar. See also Bockmuehl, Markus, Ancient Apocryphal Gospels (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017)Google Scholar; and Klauck, Hans-Josef, The Apocryphal Gospels: An Introduction (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2004)Google Scholar.

25 For an introduction to Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, including critical issues, thematic and theological issues, and a translation, see de Jonge, M., The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (Leiden: Brill, 1978)Google Scholar. For commentary, see Hollander, H. W. and de Jonge, M., The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1985)Google Scholar.

26 For an introduction to the Odes, including critical issues, thematic and theological issues, and a translation, see Charlesworth, James H., ‘The Odes of Solomon’, in Charlesworth, James H. (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, Expansions of the ‘Old Testament’ and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2015 [1983]), pp. 725–74Google Scholar.

27 On these passages and their interpretation, see Lattke, Michael, The Odes of Solomon: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009)Google Scholar.

28 So Charlesworth's point about the titular ambiguity regarding ‘Lord’ in the Odes: ‘it is difficult to decide when the Odist means God and when the Son by this term [Lord], since he clearly identifies the two’. Charlesworth, ‘Odes of Solomon’, p. 729. See further ibid., n. 34, which notes that 29.6 and 24.1 conflate ‘God’ and ‘Lord Messiah’.

29 A corollary theme to Christ's descent to hell is Christ's descent from heaven to earth; see on this, in the Odes, Newbold, William Romaine, ‘The Descent of Christ in the Odes of Solomon’, Journal of Biblical Literature 31/4 (1912), pp. 168–209Google Scholar.

30 Peel, Malcolm L., ‘The “Descensus ad Inferos” in “The Teachings of Silvanus” (CG VII, 4)’, Numen 26/1 (1979), pp. 23–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 30–31.

31 Ibid., p. 34.

32 Ibid., pp. 36–9.

33 For an introduction to Ascension of Isaiah, including critical issues, thematic and theological issues, and a translation, see Bettiolo, P., Kossova, A. Giambelluca, Leonardi, C., Norelli, E. and Perrone, L. (eds), Ascensio Isaiae: Textus (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995)Google Scholar; and Norelli, E., L'Ascensione di Isaia: Studi su un apocrifo al crocevia dei cristianesimi (Bologna: Centro editorial dehoniano, 1994)Google Scholar.

34 See similar, if truncated, statements about the descent in 4.21; and 9.12–17.

35 ‘And there they all named the primal Father and his Beloved, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, all with one voice …’

36 See also in this respect Gospel of Bartholomew. Because the dating of this text and its different recensions is highly contentious, I have chosen to leave it out of the current analysis. Nevertheless, even more clearly than Ascen. Isa., it presents the descent as an act in which the incarnate Christ invades and defeats Hades through concealing his divine nature. See esp. Gos. Bart. 1.3 (Slavonic), 8, 18, 31 (Greek).

37 On Irenaeus and the descent, see Wicks, ‘Christ's Saving Descent to the Dead’, pp. 294–309.

38 For an introduction to Dialogue including critical issues, thematic and theological issues, and a translation, see Marcovich, Miroslav, Iustini Martyris Dialogus cum Tryphone (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997)Google Scholar.

39 For an introduction to Against Heresies, including critical issues, thematic and theological issues, and a translation, see the following: Rousseau, A. and Doutreleau, L., Irénée de Lyon: Contre le Hérésies, Livres I–III, SC 263–4, 293–4, 100 (Paris: Cerf, 1979, 1984, 1974)Google Scholar; and Rousseau, A., Hemmerdinger, B., Doutreleau, L. and Mercier, C., Irénée de Lyon: Contre le Hérésies, Livre IV, SC 210–11 (Paris: Cerf, 1965)Google Scholar.

40 For an introduction to the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, including critical issues, thematic and theological issues, and a translation, see K. Ter-Mekerttschian and S. G. Wilson, with Prince Maxe of Saxony (eds), Εἰς ἐπίδειξιν τοῦ ἀποστολικοῦ κηρύγματος; The Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, with Seven Fragments (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989 [1917]).

41 Cf. also Against Heresies 4.22.1.

42 For an introduction to Peri Pascha including critical issues, thematic and theological issues, and a translation, see Melito of Sardis, On Pascha and Fragments, revised edn, ed. and trans. Hall, Stuart George (Oxford: Clarendon, 2012)Google Scholar.

43 These quotations are from Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, trans. Alistair Stewart-Sykes (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001).

44 On the relationship between Paul of Samosata, the Council of Antioch, and the Nicene debates, see Behr, John, The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001), pp. 207–36Google Scholar.

45 On second- and third-century impetuses for the Nicene controversies, see Ayres, Lewis, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: OUP, 2004), pp. 11–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 E.g. Ignatius, Ephesians 9.1; Magnesians 13.1; Smyrnaeans 2.1.

47 On generation and procession, see Anatolios, Khaled, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), e.g. pp. 139–43Google Scholar; and Holmes, Stephen R., The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture, History, and Modernity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), pp. 97–120Google Scholar, 144–6.

48 For introductions to the extra, see e.g. Willis, Edward David, Calvin's Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin's Theology, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966)Google Scholar; also Oberman, Heiko A., ‘The “Extra” Dimension in the Theology of Calvin’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 21/1 (Jan. 1970), pp. 43–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 This emphasis on Christ's divinity and humanity and the necessity of that twofold nature for the effectiveness of his work is found throughout these texts. See the references cited in n. 20 above.

50 See Pitstick, Light in Darkness, pp. 1–6.

51 For a critical and contextual introduction to Chalcedon (as well as the latter three ecumenical councils), see Price, Richard and Gaddis, Michael (eds), The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

52 On the development from Nicene-Constantinopolitan trinitarianism to Chalcedonian christology, see Behr, John, The Nicene Faith, parts 1 and 2, Formation of Christian Theology 2 (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Young, Frances M., with Teal, Andrew, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010)Google Scholar.

53 Balthasar grounds his understanding of separation between Father and Son in the descent in his understanding of the eternal generation of the Son as a kenotic event in the life of the godhead. See TD 4, pp. 333ff.